Standard-of-care insulin therapies for regulating blood glucose in diabetes typically involve either multiple daily subcutaneous injections or subcutaneous infusion with an insulin pump. Typically, combinations of basal and bolus insulin are administered to meet the subject's basal metabolic insulin requirement; correction bolus doses are administered to regulate hyperglycemia; and additional meal bolus doses are added to provide insulin for food consumption. In current usual care, a correction bolus of insulin that is typically administered to treat a hyperglycemic state is based on an estimate of the individual's so-called “correction factor(s)”, which relate how much insulin is estimated by the user to adequately compensate for different levels of hyperglycemia. Correction factors are heuristically estimated on an individual basis and are modified (essentially by trial-and-error) from time to time. This is similar to how basal rates of insulin are heuristically estimated on an individual basis to provide basal metabolic insulin requirements.
Similarly, meal bolus insulin doses taken around food consumption are also typically estimated heuristically on an individual basis based on the quantity and content (carbohydrate and other) of the food, in conjunction with a heuristic estimate of the individual's so-called “insulin-to-carbohydrate ratio(s)”, among other factors such as the time of the day, physical activity, health state, emotional state, etc. The right correction bolus doses, insulin basal rates, and meal bolus doses alike, are all essentially determined by trial-and-error experience and could vary significantly among individuals as well as for an individual over time; yet, they are all critical determinants of how well an individual is able to control their blood glucose. Dosing requirements are also subject to factors such as the time of the day, physical activity, health state, emotional state, etc., and could vary over periods of hours, days, or weeks due to transient changes (e.g. due to circadian hormonal fluctuations, current illness, physical activity, or emotional state) and/or periods of months or years due to developmental changes (e.g. due to hormonal changes that occur during puberty or menopause).